


dreaming with eyes wide awake

by rievu



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (and to lovers if you squint), Alternate Universe, M/M, Vollstrecker AU, but a different iteration of it, enemies to allies that are mirrors darkly reflecting off of each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29214351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: Caleb gives him a wry smile before saying, “We are making progress despite the pessimism the war has given both of us and the mantle of loyalty that the Empire has woven for me out of sin. We know enough to see the venom in our own veins, and I do not think that it is too much for us to try and dream.”“If we must dream,” Essek says. “Then we must dream with eyes wide awake because this is a dangerous gamble we are making.”// two "enemies" meet clandestinely in pursuit of a mutual desire for knowledge
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	dreaming with eyes wide awake

**Author's Note:**

> this is an AU where the war intensifies to a fever-pitch point after essek hands the beacon over and an AU where caleb remains part of the vollstrecker.

The moonlight is cold and welcoming, splashing down on Essek’s face with a cool respite. Catha rises, passing over Ruidis, and lights up the hanging sky. When Essek keeps his head tilted up to the skies, he thinks he can forget about the war for a brief moment. Instead, he just stands there, gazing at the moons nestled between the Ashkeeper Peaks. 

Then, he looks down and sees the corpses lying in rigor mortis across the ground. There are bodies of Empire and Dynasty soldiers alike, all frozen in their last throes of death. Some are scorched over with furious fire, and when Essek moves forward, step by step, he leaves no footprints as he floats above the soot and ash left behind by the Empire.

It is a hideous sight to see, but Essek knows that he is partially responsible for it all. There is silence — no cricket hum of armor — as he moves forward because there is no soldier left alive. He is here under the guise of moonlight and magic, and he forces himself not to flinch away from the sight of his folly.

That is because he chose to give one of the beacons of the Luxon away, and that set the fire alight on this war brewing for years and years. They should feel slim to Essek and the rest of his ilk with their long-lived lives, but to his meager, unconsecuted life, it seems like an eternity. War has been the only thing that Essek has known for so long, and still, the sight of it snatches his breath away with a certain kind of horror.

Out of the corner of his ear, he hears a slight clearing of a throat, and he turns to see a man dressed in burgundy robes with a leather harness securely holding in pages and pages of spells. Caleb Widogast inclines his head towards Essek and says, “It’s been a while, Shadowhand.”

“The same goes for you, Scourger,” Essek replies. He gestures over to the white ash stirring up in the wind. The scent of charred bone is still in the air, but it is old. Essek raises a brow and asks, “Your work?”

“Of course,” Caleb says with a chuckle. “Who else would it be?”

Essek mutters under his breath, “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

Caleb cocks his head and easily replies, “Me, dramatic? You flatter me, Shadowhand.”

Essek folds his hands, hiding them underneath his expansive sleeves, and says, “So, what is the occasion?”

The Scourger shrugs. “Perhaps I just wanted to greet you and say my hellos.”

Essek snorts at that. “Lies don’t suit you well, Scourger,” he tells Caleb.

Caleb spreads out his hands to gesture at both himself and at Essek, and sparks dance along the tips of his fingers as he says, “And yet, the two of us are probably some of the greatest liars between our two nations. Do you not agree?”

“I do. Let us carry on,” Essek sighs. “What do you have for me?”

“More notes,” Caleb says. He unlatches a slimmer notebook from the harness around his chest and holds it out for Essek to see. It’s a simple thing: numerous scraps of parchment sewn together with a hasty hand. Essek reaches out for it and flips through Caleb’s now-familiar scrawl. As he scans through the notes, Caleb chuckles, “It appears that your god is quite the powerful object.”

Essek snaps, “It is not a  _ god.  _ There are no gods in this war. Only the follies of our two nations.” And he knows the taste of his own heresy best. After all, Essek was the one to hand over the Luxon. He had danced around the idea of blasphemy and the agony of war long enough, and now, he was secure in his convictions about the Luxon. He just didn’t think that the Bright Queen and the Empire would order this degree of slaughter.

“Forgive me for offending your heretic tendencies,” Caleb sighs. “The artifact, perhaps?”

“Call it what it is,” Essek bitterly says. “It is a beacon of magic, nothing more and nothing less. My people may consider it holy, but I do not think it is a god. And if it were a god, it would’ve done something about this war sooner or later.”

“Gods tend to be fickle in the myths,” Caleb muses. “I think that this must be extremely entertaining for them as they’re watching from above. But I’m no cleric or paladin of the gods; I’m merely a wizard.”

Essek looks at him with lidded eyes and knows that it isn’t the whole truth. Caleb, much like him, is nothing more than a child shaped into a weapon. Even if Essek has more years to his name, he is still unconsecuted and fresh. There is no other life for him other than this war that his predecessors generated.

Sometimes, he thinks about the day he first met the man. They met as enemies on the battlefield, and Caleb — no, Bren — was a wildfire incarnate. Then, Essek brought the beacon to the Empire and the man sent to meet him was none other than Bren Aldric Ermemdrud. From that point onward, they had a begrudging alliance, and from there, Essek remembers discovering the same thirst and spark for knowledge in Caleb as he did in himself. Most importantly, they were both weary of the war. They are mirrors, darkly reflecting each other.

So, here they are. Turning traitor to both of their nations for the sake of learning more knowledge from the artifact that Essek’s people revered as a god. Essek supposes that there are worse things than the terrible intimacy of being known, and he knows that both he and Caleb had to make the deliberate and delicate choice to change into what they have now.

Essek exhales out a long sigh, and his breath fogs up in the cold night air. As a simple reply, Essek merely says, “As am I.”

“Which I know well,” Caleb returns. He steps forward to flip through the patched-up set of notes in Essek’s hands, and they are only inches away from each other. However, Caleb seems to take no mind as he pages through and finds a specific scribbled rune. “So, the news,” he begins. “I gained more access to the beacon, and there is a vast wealth of knowledge. I tried the small amount of dunamancy you taught me, and it made me feel like I was grasping at some sort of… Thread? A sense of possibility?”

Essek barks out a sharp burst of mirthless laughter. “Hope? In this war?”

“I did not say hope, I said possibility,” Caleb replies.

“Are the two not one and the same?”

Caleb reaches out for Essek’s hand, and now, Essek is acutely aware of the small distance between them. “I can concede that they are two sides of the same coin, but they are not the same,” he says. “I felt that possibility in it, and I think that we could study it more if given the chance.”

“The chance is one that we do not have,” Essek whispers.

Caleb pulls him even closer, and Essek can feel the breath on Caleb’s lips as he says, “But we could.”

“Ambitious, aren’t you,” Essek murmurs. Now that he’s this close to Caleb, he can feel the veritable warmth of the fire living under Caleb’s skin.

Caleb’s eyes flash for a bit and then he lets go of Essek as he says, “I must be for the work I must do.”

“Work for the Empire?”

Caleb turns his back on Essek and snorts, “I am far too selfish for that. And the same goes for you, Shadowhand.”

“I suppose that’s why you want me to call you Widogast rather than Ermendrud,” Essek says.

Caleb turns around and gives him a flash of a smile. “Precisely.”

Essek unfolds his hands and begrudgingly says, “Perhaps, this possibility is a start. After all, that is what dunamancy builds its principles on.”

Caleb gives him a wry smile before saying, “We are making progress despite the pessimism the war has given both of us and the mantle of loyalty that the Empire has woven for me out of sin. We know enough to see the venom in our own veins, and I do not think that it is too much for us to try and dream.”

“If we must dream,” Essek says. “Then we must dream with eyes wide awake because this is a dangerous gamble we are making.” He laughs a little to himself. “Then again, we were always in danger, whether it be from the war or this choice that we are making for ourselves.”

“Exactly,” Caleb says. He steps over once more and hesitates. Essek can see the falter in his eyes and in the corners of his lips, but before Essek can ruminate more on it, Caleb steps in and gently brushes his lips over Essek’s cheek. “Dream well then,” he murmurs. Then, he takes a step back and teleports away.

Caleb’s departure sends the ash swirling up in his wake, and Essek has to cough and shield his face away from the plume that rises up to meet Catha and Ruidis. When the breeze settles and the soot returns back to the charred bodies and ground where they came from, Essek stares at the spot where Caleb used to be. He doesn’t know when he began to turn this far away from the Dynasty, but he finds little regret in what he has wrought aside from the cost this has taken on his people. He has no allegiance to a god, but he has full allegiance to the people he once swore to protect. 

Essek gazes out at the broken battlefield, and for a moment, the whitened ash almost looks like snow under the cool moonlight save for the bodies that still litter the ground. There is little that Essek can muster up to justify the cost that this has dealt to both nations, but Essek swears to himself that he and Caleb  _ will _ unravel the secrets of the beacon. Even if it took a sacrilegious sacrifice, it is something that had to be done.

Essek takes a final look at the sky and at the moons that oversee the land. He lets himself forget about the war for a single second, and then, he snaps himself back together and teleports away.

The ash does not swirl in his wake.

**Author's Note:**

> i originally planned to make this a longer, fuller fic, but i decided to just leave it like this. either way, it was a good writing challenge to get me back into the mood of writing. my other fic, ["venom in our veins"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175243/chapters/58223509) is a longer fic that is also a vollstrecker AU, so feel free to check that out if you're interested in more vollstrecker caleb! it's not strictly the same AU, but it's similar enough.


End file.
